The Barrie Elite Hurricanes U15 girls team is looking to drive the season right to the end-of-the-year provincial championships.
And with a silver medal in their pockets from the season’s first tournament, they’re on right on track.
Emma De Souza came to the team as coach last year on the heels of playing varsity volleyball at the University of Windsor, and she saw lot of promise.
The team moved from 50th position provincewide to No. 13.
Some of the members trained through the summer in preparation for this year.
“We actually took the entire summer to build this team … to be top three in all of Ontario,” says De Souza. “Everybody was recruited for a specific reason.”
Given its success last year, the Hurricanes were able to attract players from other areas, including Orillia. There are also three underage girls, which means the team will have a solid foundation for next year, too.
De Souza started playing volleyball in Oakville, at about the same age as the girls she's now coaching, and fell in love with the game. She was also very competitive, playing at university for three years. Her two younger sisters as well as her dad, Phil DeSouza, are still involved in volleyball. The elder DeSouza, an investment advisor, helps his daughter with coaching duties in Barrie.
When her family moved to Midland, she approached the Elites and volunteered to coach a team. De Souza is also the assistant coach at York University.
The club, which just celebrated its 20th anniversary, does its best to accommodate all the kids who want to play. If there are more players than teams, they create new teams in all age groups and all levels.
De Souza’s U15 team plays other high-performance teams, mostly in the Greater Toronto Area. After two months of training, the teams get into competitive play, which involves four tournaments, leading to the provincial championships, which is a three-day event in April.
And they got a solid start at their first tournament two weeks ago. They had a win and a loss in the first pool play, but won two out of two matches in both quarterfinals and semi-finals and came up just short in the final, taking second place.
“But we walked away very proud of ourselves because most of the girls never played at this level before,” says De Souza.
They are now playing in the premier league, among the top 10 teams in the province and are ranked seventh.
All the girls on the team are passionate about the sport and are interested in spending the summer playing with Team Ontario. They are also determined to play volleyball at a higher level and many have their eyes on university teams.
Among them is Gracie Jackman. At the age of 13, she serves as co-captain of the team.
Jackman was a competitive dancer and performed nationally in Prague, Czech Republic over the summer. But the demands of the two sports became too challenging and she realized she needed to focus on one, ultimately choosing volleyball.
“I realized how much I liked volleyball,” explains the Grade 8 student at Warnica Public School, “so I decided to stop dancing so I could go full-time into volleyball.”
Her goal is to play college-level volleyball, which she’s been getting into the habit of watching.
Meanwhile, she’s getting a kick out of not just the stellar start to this season, but the group of girls she’s playing with.
“It’s such a great group of girls, it’s so fun to play with them,” Jackman says.
The coach says the team truly reflects the best of the area coming together as its diverse members develop the culture and philosophy of high-performance play. And she believes the Elite Hurricanes can make it to the top of the pack at provincials at the end of the season.
“We truly think this is the team that will be able to do it,” she says.
Meanwhile, De Souza is making her own plans and expects to head east next year to work on her master’s degree in kinesiology and coaching and is making succession plans to hand the coaching baton to a new coach.
“Its really nice to have athletes who you could trust your faith in and let them go out onto the court to do their magic,” says DeSouza.
